On November 25, 1903, Clyde J. Coleman, received U.S. Patent No. 745,157 on a Means for Operating Motor Vehicles (an electric starter for an automobile engine starter):

Before the electric starter the engine had to be hand-cranked, However hand cranking frequently resulted in broken thumbs, and occassionally a broken wrist, dislocated shoulder, or worse. Furthermore increasing engine size was making hand cranking increasingly physically demanding.

A few years later, Charles F. Kettering and Henry M. Leland, of Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), obtained U.S. Patent No. 1,150,523 on an improved design: